For those of you whose pulse quickened at the word “Collector”, imagined lurid tales of my days in the Indian Administrative Service & were licking their chops for some dirty gossip – This post is about the junk I collect. Fooled Ya! I’m so unsorry.

Whenever we visit other people, I’m amazed by the sheer lack of geegaw in their homes. What gives? We have a copious supply of baubles, decorative & otherwise. Objet d’Art are strewn in every room, including the bathrooms. There aren’t enough walls to hang our paintings – half of them are stacked in a cup-board. And I’m still coveting a few Art Deco prints of Tamara de Lempicka. We had to convert a bedroom into a library for our books, CDs, DVDs & vintage Cassettes. Since we buy at least 1 book every week, our bookshelves are packed like a can of sardines.

I’m a compulsive collector. Our home is my museum. Sometimes I wonder what Freud would make of me. According to him, avid collectors are compulsive neurotics who are very anal retentive. As if we need a dead guy to proclaim that I’m neurotic and anal. Its too obvious! So let’s ignore the tedious Sigmund.

Life would be a tiresome bitch were it not for our hobbies. For George W, its war mongering. Miley Cyrus poses for racy pictures (some of them with her obliging dad). Michael Jackson holds sleep-overs with kids (pardon my pun). And Kim Kardashian makes home videos (har har). Like I said, we all need our pastimes.

When we were kids, my brother joined the local Numismatics club. And I tailed along. How excited we were when we got our 1st (& lamentably last) US $1 bill! We entrusted it to our mother for safe-keeping – and she reverently placed it next to her diamond ear-rings. In those days, inertia & a poor economy made Indians sedentary – very few people ventured out of our shores. So after enthusiastically collecting a few slotted pennies, we had to sit around & twiddle our toes. Numismatics, Shumismatics. A hobby is interesting only when there’s some Indiana Jones kind of action going. So I dropped out after the 1st month & left my brother in a lurch.

Next up was Philately. Stamp collecting sounded cool. Our father bought us a Stamp Album from the erst-while Moor Market in Chennai. For a few weeks, no letter or package was safe from our ransacking & pillaging. We accosted – almost attacked – the beleaguered postman every day, in our quest for stamps.

After having our fill of Indian stamps, we grew sullen & withdrawn. “What’s the matter with them? Cat got their tongues?” wondered our uncle. “Which would be a blessing, considering their non-stop prattle” our dear dad jibed. “Don’t you have any friends living abroad? Do we lead such wretched lives that no one from America, Africa or Europe care to communicate with us?” we asked plaintively. Not that we craved human contact with other cultures, we just wanted their stamps. “I do have a pen-pal in Germany” mused our dad. “And I have friends who have family in other countries” said our aunt. “Then what are you waiting for?” we goaded them thanklessly.

We were crest-fallen when their toils yielded puny results. “I know a company that sells foreign stamps” our wise mother said. Somehow, buying stamps to fuel a hobby didn’t sound cricket to me. One needs to sweat it out. But, my lazy brother eagerly acquiesced. We learned a lot from the stamps our mother bought – and our lingo changed overnight. We referred to countries by their postal names. Ceskoslovensko, Magyar Posta, Deutsche Bundespost, Helvetia, Polska, Tanganyika & Sverige figured prominently in our conversations.

After the initial excitement, stamp collection became a drag. Its the hunting, not the possessing, that’s exciting. Possessing makes you smug, not that we minded the bragging rights that came with it. Hunting makes the fruit that much sweeter – and I longed for it. Soon, I renounced Philately as a high-brow hobby, labeled my brother an “Elitist” & chased unusual hobbies of my own making.

I read recently that compulsive hoarders (AKA pack-rats) have a lesion in their right frontal lobe. Said lesion removes all restraint & makes people less discerning in determining the worth of an item. I must have a golf-ball sized hole. For though I’m not a pack-rat & I choose collectibles ostensibly for their value, I happily bounce from 1 hobby to another.

More on that on my next post.